{"id":132161,"date":"2025-09-09T21:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T21:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/132161\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T21:27:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T21:27:10","slug":"new-album-playing-with-boygenius-and-lucy-dacus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/132161\/","title":{"rendered":"New Album, Playing with Boygenius and Lucy Dacus"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\then Melina Duterte goes out with friends, they play a game. If Duterte, who records as Jay Som<\/a>, is with company at a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant and they hear a song by a contemporary indie artist (say, Alvvays or Phoebe Bridgers), \u201cThey\u2019re always like, \u2018All right, who wants to bet when Jay Som is going to come on?\u2019\u201d says Duterte with a laugh at a Brooklyn cafe recently. \u201cIt happens every single time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut even if the music being played at a coffee shop isn\u2019t Jay Som\u2019s, chances are pretty good she\u2019s had a role in recording it. Over the past half-dozen years, Duterte, 30, has become one of indie rock<\/a>\u2019s foremost behind-the-scenes record-makers, having been involved in producing, engineering, mixing or simply playing on records by Lucy Dacus<\/a>, Illuminati Hotties, Vagabon, and Chastity Belt, to name just a few. She spent much of 2023 as the touring bassist<\/a> for boygenius<\/a>, whose debut album she also contributed to. The perfectly placed vocals, drums, bass, and guitars on \u201cLights Light Up,\u201d<\/a> the 2023 song by buzzy singer-songwriter Fenne Lilly? Duterte mixed them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, after taking her place as an in-demand producer and go-to collaborator, Duterte is back with Belong, her first album as Jay Som since 2019. It\u2019s an album that took many false starts and failed attempts, and one she says she almost didn\u2019t make. Belong is also a thrilling survey course of Jay Som\u2019s influences, from crunch-guitar emo to delicate folk music, with features from Hayley Williams and Jimmy Eat World\u2019s Jim Adkins. And it\u2019s just the latest in what\u2019s shaping up to be the most fruitful chapter yet in Duterte\u2019s ever-evolving career. The album is due in October, a month before yet another album Duterte produced comes out (this one is by Australian singer-songwriter Hatchie).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy girl is busy, rightfully so!\u201d Dacus tells Rolling Stone in an email. \u201cI\u2019ve been a fan of Melina\u2019s music for years, so getting to be up close to see her work as a player, engineer, producer and band member has been a real treat. I think she has room to be way less humble; she can pretty much do everything and anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Rolling Stone first interviewed<\/a> Jay Som back in 2017, the piece ended with Duterte expressing her desire to collaborate with friends. \u201cI\u2019ve only worked by myself really,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019d be nice to mess around\u2026with people I really admire.\u201d Presented with that quote today, Duterte almost gets choked up. \u201cWait, that\u2019s so cute. That makes me so emotional,\u201d she says. \u201cI said that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelong, the new Jay Som record, is an intoxicating bouquet of reference points that encapsulate Duterte\u2019s life as a listener. Many of the songs began simply as Duterte working through riffs and arrangements that reminded her of music she loves: There was the demo titled \u201cCloud Nothings Idea\u201d (lead single \u201cFloat\u201d) or her \u201cDrake-slash-Hovvdy song\u201d (album opener \u201cCards on the Table\u201d) or her \u201cBroken Social Scene-slash-Alex G song \u2014 a very easy prompt for myself\u201d (\u201cCasino Stars\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tDacus praises the mix of styles on this record: \u201cNo sounds are off limits,\u201d she says of Belong.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile most artists talk about their influences as a means to finding their own individual sound, for Jay Som, her favorite records are an end in and of themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want to sound like other people,\u201d she says. \u201cSome people get really confused when I say that because they\u2019re like, \u201cWhy would you want to sound like someone else?\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018That\u2019s why I make music\u2019\u2026.A lot of people are scared of feeling that way because we want to feel so unique, and that we\u2019re pushing the envelope, but everything\u2019s been done before. If you just keep doing shit that you love and are proud of, that\u2019s the most unique thing you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWHEN JAY SOM\u2019S touring was suspended in March 2020 and the world began to shut down, Duterte started teaching herself some new skills. She settled into the Los Angeles home she shared with her longtime partner, Chastity Belt\u2019s Annie Truscott. (Also living nearby was Eagles of Death Metal\u2019s Jesse Hughes, who\u2019d regularly subject his neighbors to shouting late-night karaoke renditions of Mazzy Star\u2019s \u201cFade Into You\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd she began honing her record-making skills. The career she\u2019d built for herself since her 2016 debut, Turn Into, no longer seemed viable for the time being. But working on others\u2019 records during lockdown did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt feels like I went to school for five years,\u201d she says. \u201cI was on YouTube and Gearspace every day, just annoying all of my engineer friends to see if they can teach me things, and blowing my stimulus check on audio gear. That changed everything.\u201d What began as a side project \u2014 helping out on friends\u2019 home-recorded indie releases \u2014 quickly blossomed into a full-fledged new career, at a time when touring as an independent artist remained a dicey proposition even with many returning to the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2021, she released a collaborative album with Palehound\u2019s El Kempner under the moniker Bachelor. Then boygenius called. After working on 2023\u2019s The Record, Duterte traveled the country in style with Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Dacus. For someone who\u2019d spent much of the 2010s crashing on friends\u2019 floors, having her own bass technician and eight different instruments in her rig was a huge change. \u201cMy face would hurt from smiling every single day,\u201d she says of that tour.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tAll of Duterte\u2019s experiences working with other artists greatly impacted her relationship to her own work. But they also, at times, made it harder to figure out her relationship to Jay Som. \u201cI had a major identity issue with my work,\u201d she says of this time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this year, deep into the recording of Belong, Duterte was flooded with self-doubt. \u201cFor the longest time I remember thinking, \u2018Should I just give up Jay Som and become a full-time producer?\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI did have those moments where I was like, \u2018I have no business singing\u2026 What is going on? What\u2019s the end game here?\u2019 Just classic imposter syndrome. Like, \u2018Am I too old?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuterte had helped enough artists escape from the depths of their own insecurity in the past few years to know that such thoughts and feelings were simply part of the creative process. And she had her own collaborators \u2014 namely co-producers Joao Gonzalez, Mal Hauser, and Kyle Pulley \u2014 to ground her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking forward, Duterte is inspired by artist-producers like Cate Le Bon, who has made a career out of juggling both roles. The combination offers a sort of balance (and busyness) that she craves. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of weird to say, but I clearly see the next five to ten years of my life,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cI see a lot of new people in my life, and just growing with a lot of the people who are with me now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe sees herself re-introducing her Jay Som songs to a crowd of new fans who might be too young to have heard them when they came out a decade ago. She sees herself taking a break from producing for a minute while she focuses on Jay Som, then diving back into that work in due time. She sees herself seeking out more opportunities around the globe: to try to work with Japanese and Korean bands, and to one day bring her family along for a tour of the Philippines, where her parents are from. She sees herself making less guitar-based music.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just want to get better,\u201d Duterte says. \u201cI want to collaborate with more people on the off days and weeks on tour, and I want to get into the studio and I want to record people whenever I\u2019m in their city. I want to write new songs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tBut what is she most excited to do at this very moment? Duterte smiles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRight now, she says, she just wants to play Jay Som songs on tour.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"W hen Melina Duterte goes out with friends, they play a game. If Duterte, who records as Jay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[72047,49,48,75,24430,72048,17092,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-132161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-boygenius","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-indie-rock","13":"tag-jay-som","14":"tag-lucy-dacus","15":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}